ROBLOX Brings Millions of User-Created Games to iOS

Six years ago, ROBLOX started attracting younger gamers – generally between 8 and 14 years-old – to its user-generated, massively multiplayer world. While it's easy to draw some comparisons to the block-based concept of Minecraft, ROBLOX separates itself by allowing users to create entire games for others to play. Today, ROBLOX has launched the mobile version of its unique platform to the iOS format, bringing with it millions of user-generated levels and opening up possibilities for creativity to an even wider audience.

The traffic to the ROBLOX website, where users can log in to check out user-created levels and interact with its ever-growing community, is a bit staggering. Over 10 million unique visitors are stopping by the game hub monthly, racking up 1.8 billion page views during the same span. According to the company's comScore data, ROBLOX is attracting a wider youth audience than even juggernauts like Nickelodeon, Disney, or Lego.

When the massively-multiplayer game site launched in 2006, the company had a long-term goal of turning ROBLOX into "the greatest toy on the internet," says vice-president of marketing Brad Justus.

"The idea being that as far we were concerned this isn't something you just played with, it was something you played in. The focus is really to encourage creativity and building; letting kids express themselves," adds Justus. "There are a lot of sites out there on the web where you can go and play games, but this is one of the only sites out there – certainly the largest one – where users are specifically building games for each other."

The content created by the massive ROBLOX community seems to span across a wide range of genres. First-person shooters are the most popular, but it's just as easy to find a racing game, tower defense, or just groups of users building ridiculously detailed structures and items. One ROBLOX player recently built an intensely specific recreation of a BMW.

"You could read things written on the dashboard," said ROBLOX communications specialist Alan Fackler. "It was really amazing."

While it's possible to just log in to the ROBLOX site – or the new iOS app – and begin playing games for free, a Builder's Club account offers more advanced features like multiple active game spaces and even the ability to sell user-created items in exchange for the in-game currency, known as Robux. Builder's Club accounts are available in three tiers, starting at about $6 a month.

But as users become increasingly more involved with the ROBLOX system, they may want to dabble in creating their own custom games by scripting with a virtual environment in ROBLOX Studio.

Perhaps one of the most interesting outcomes of ROBLOX over the past six years: some kids who began playing the game at a young age have since taught themselves to program. Fackler mentioned one such user, who after spending a number of years learning to script, was actually hired by ROBLOX as a content lead. The team thinks the popularity of the game – and the deep levels of creativity – are a signifier of an overall trend for user-generated content.

"I think more than anything else, [ROBLOX] shows the sort of 'maker' culture is getting bigger. And we are probably the only experience out there that allows you to play and then actually progress to create," said Justus. "I think other games, they give you templates. But we give you a little more freedom than that."

As ROBLOX hits the App Store today, Builders Club members will have immediate access to literally millions of user-generated games. Those without a paid subscription will still have a fairly large assortment of levels to play, though. And beyond the alluring concept of just carrying around such a massive selection of games in a portable device, ROBLOX for iOS is a seamless experience with your account on Mac or PC.

"That's actually something really unique about us. I don't know of any other company that's doing this, allowing PC and Mac users to play against iOS users," said Bromley. "They're all going to be playing together cross-platform. We think that's really exciting."

While other iOS and Mac games have attempted to provide a complete, cross-platform format with varying results, ROBLOX will actually allow its massive community the opportunity to play all its games, regardless of device. Of course, the idea of every game's content working flawlessly with the new touch-screen interface sounds daunting, but Bromley and the rest of the ROBLOX team seem confidant in the company's "clean and portable" code.

"During the process of developing for iOS we found a much quicker way of rendering everything that we have in our world," adds Bromley. "Moving to iOS we did some optimizations, so the largest world we have will actually render 10-times faster. So it's at a point now where the render is actually faster than high-end PCs."

The iOS version of ROBLOX also introduces a new infinite scroll system, where the ever-growing catalog of games will continuously grow. Essentially, when browsing the list of available levels, the system is actively populating the list, meaning you'll likely never run out of new user-generated games to explore. While the system uses an organic, user-driven system to highlight more popular content, the ROBLOX team also hand-selects some of the best examples of user-created designs.

ROBLOX shows no signs of slowing down, with the team looking to keep expanding onto additional platforms and devices, which obviously means the community could grow at the same pace. But the developers seem most excited about the potential of new ideas on the horizon, as users begin to create games specifically for the unique interface of iOS.

"We're hoping to move from the biggest website you're never heard of, to the biggest website everyone's heard of," said Justus.